Hacker News Reader

> scorched-earth, mass-graves liquidate every single participant in the old regime, and all of their supporters

I feel like this would be an excellent way to speed-run the creation of a large group of people (and their descendants) who hate us _specifically_, and are even more motivated to cause us harm. I can't imagine many people would say "yep, I guess you won!" when you've killed their fathers, uncles, grandparents, and older brothers.

It takes a few generations of extreme overwhelming force, at a minimum typically.

See: the Roman Empire. They had a timeline of several hundred years before the new territories were ‘roman’

I don't know man?

Everyone failed in Afghanistan.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but even Alexander himself failed in Afghanistan. The Persians tried for centuries, and always failed. The Caliphate was the most successful, but only because they never wanted any kind of real change. The place is just unique.

The thought that we were gonna go in there and change things was probably ill considered at the outset. When you objectively consider the historical record of the people of Afghanistan. Force was extremely likely to not work. I believe there doesn't really exist anyone out there with a good idea on anything that could have worked. In the end, we left. Just as everyone before us did. And I'd be willing to go on record now and say that everyone who goes into Afghanistan after us will leave Afghanistan in the end as well.

It's never as simple as, "more bombs", "more money", "more education", etc etc. Afghanistan is a unique problem, that is uniquely resistant to all of the common solutions.

It’s simply not true that everyone failed in Afghanistan- the Mongols were very successful and the Mughals after them created a roughly 600 year period of relative peace. They just understood the realities of that region and operated in ways that modern western nations (thankfully) aren’t willing to. The fact we tried a different way was admirable despite ultimately being unsuccessful and a poor allocation of resources.

Relevant wiki quotes:

“In the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire (1219–1221), Genghis Khan invaded the region from the northeast in one of his many conquests to create the huge Mongol Empire. His armies slaughtered thousands in the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad etc. After Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia, there was a rebellion in the region of Helmand which was brutally put down by his son and successor, Ogedei Khan, who killed all male residents of Ghazni and Helmand in 1222; the women were enslaved and sold. Thereafter most parts of Afghanistan other than the extreme south-eastern remained under Mongol rule as part of the Ilkhanate and the Turko-Mongol Chagatai Khanate.”

And:

“From 1383 to 1385, the Afghanistan area was conquered from the north by Timur, leader of neighboring Transoxiana (roughly modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and adjacent areas), and became a part of the Timurid Empire. Timur was from a Turko-Mongol tribe and although a Muslim, saw himself more as an heir of Genghis Khan. Timur's armies caused great devastation and are estimated to have caused the deaths of 17 million people. He brought great destruction on Afghanistan's south, slaughtering thousands and enslaving an equal number of women. Allied with the Uzbeks, Hazaras and other Turkic communities in the north his dominance over Afghanistan was long-lasting, allowing him for his future successful conquests in Central Anatolia against the Ottomans.”

The Mughal empire rose out of this and ruled until the 1800’s.

Which is why you shouldn't get into this business unless you're fully committed to it, as opposed to just doing a flavor-of-the-week invasion and destabilization of a country.

Historical track record shows that it takes at least a generation of war and incredibly brutal repression to actually accomplish the kind of regime change that the war's architects were aiming for.

If the issue is a few leaders, sure, invading and removing them can work. If your issue is with the entrenched system that produced those leaders, I've outlined what it takes to replace it.

>Not doing it is exactly why Reconstruction failed. The slavers lost the war, but won the peace, and their politics reasserted as soon as they were allowed to govern themselves.

Well there are more peaceful ways of achieving this: Look at post Nazi Germany and how they tried to eradicate even thinking about Nazism just to try and limit these thoughts from festering and growing.

In the US Reconstruction failed because of circumstance. Lincolns assassination led to what is considered the worst president in the US taking the reign. For goodness sake he was drunk out of his mind during his inaugural address! He systematically started to reverse the progress his predecessor made and gave cover to the losers to regroup and make gains again. We are still suffering to this day because of that one event.

> How exactly does providing the latter do anything but piss surviving conservatives and hardliners and reactionaries off even more?

It is fairly well understood that decreasing gender inequality by empowering women is one of the most effective ways to reduce instability in struggling societies.

Did any of those societies have as many hard-liners who were both running the country prior to a regime change, that were fully committed to political violence to achieve their cultural goals?

It's one thing to slowly shift the goal posts in a civil society over decades through these kinds of soft changes...

> Did any of those societies have as many hard-liners who were both running the country prior to a regime change, that were fully committed to political violence to achieve their cultural goals?

Yes

> It's one thing to slowly shift the goal posts in a civil society over decades through these kinds of soft changes...

Are we talking about the same thing? "Shifting goal posts" usually means confusing positions in an argument by changing the point of the discussion. I'm not sure what relevance that has here.

Also, the US occupation of Afghanistan did last for decades so, again, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

> Yes

Examples?

> Also, the US occupation of Afghanistan did last for decades so, again, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

There's a world of difference between 'Occupation security forces sometimes kind of control some of the major towns', which accomplished nothing[1], compared to the decades of incredible political repression in the USSR/China, that actually moved the cultural needle and destroyed organized internal opposition within those societies.

[1] The country reverted back to its previous state before the occupation even ended.

> Examples?

Look into it yourself if you care so much. I don't care to get so far off topic.

> [1] The country reverted back to its previous state before the occupation even ended.

Ok, so, you would agree then that ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights is an important part of the plan when the objective is to destroy Al Qaeda?

It should be trivial of you to provide examples of this, if you are so confident in your claims. You bring the point up, the onus is on you to at least provide an example of this claim.

You also seem to be confused as to the difference between the Taliban and AQ, and seem to mistakenly believe that there weren't efforts to drive women's education in Afghanistan. It turns out that it didn't accomplish what you were hoping it would.

You seem to be confused.

The initial comment was this: > The place we spent the most time in the 21st century, Afghanistan, somehow went from an objective of destroying Al Qaeda to ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights.

Which implies that the commenter does not understand how decreasing gender inequality would help "destroy Al Qaeda" in Afghanistan.

The next commenter then very clearly points out the missing information stating:

> I think in Afghanistan's case, the goal was clear but it was not achievable. A bombing campaign, some boots on the ground, and killing some leaders could not actually achieve the "objective of destroying Al Qaeda," because it would just re-form afterwards. You'd have to change the society so it wouldn't reform, hence "ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal rights."

You then re-assert the initial flawed reasoning by stating > How exactly does providing the latter do anything but piss off surviving conservatives and hardliners and reactionaries even more?

To rephrase my previous answer with a quote you won't bother to look up: "Women's full participation in politics and the economy makes a society more likely to succeed"

And you want to splinter the discussion further into the difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda?

> Look into it yourself if you care so much. I don't care to get so far off topic.

You don’t need to get “far off topic”. You said yes there were such examples. So kindly name one. Clearly you were thinking something when you wrote “yes”.

Right now it sounds like you bluffed, you were called on it and your argument collapsed. Not a good look.

Whoops! You got me! I guess every time a society starts to empower women after a violent overthrow of a political regime it has been stopped by backlash from surviving conservatives and hardliners and reactionaries.

This sounds a little vague. Do you have a citation I could learn more from?

This is a good general summary: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/gender-equ...

Many people naively think that liberal democracy, where human rights are respected is kind of the natural state, which can be distorted by some evil regimes. Nothing could be further from truth: natural state of mankind is slavery with a small elite exploiting the masses. Democracy is a product of European culture and it slowly evolved from: Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Roman law, and Christianity as a religion. Countries that do not share the same cultural background are simply not compatible with democracy.

The natural state of humanity was hunter/gatherer. Civilization is kind of a later comer, although it might be older than previously thought.

So, Japan is not a democracy then?

Ancient Greece and Rome both had a small elite exploiting the masses, and both states practiced slavery. The Bible endorses the institution of slavery as God's natural order numerous times in both the Old and New Testament. Europe held the greatest slaveowning imperialist powers the world has ever known - and monarchies to boot.

Also there is no such thing as "European culture" or "Western culture"[0] per se, that's a modern retrofiction meant to lend credence to white nationalist ideology, much less any credibility in the claim that such is the sole originator and inheritor of the concept of democratic government. India had its own democratic ideals[0], as did Africa[2], and America's own democracy is derived in part from that of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy[3].

Also... since you're implying (as everyone who makes this argument does) that Islam is "simply not compatible with democracy," the cultures of the Islamic world have been influenced by ancient Greek and Christian philosophy since Islam began[4,5]. That's why European culture(s) had to recover much of the knowledge they lost after the Dark Ages from Muslim sources. So your statement disproves itself even by its own ethnocentric standard.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/western-civili...

[1]https://thediplomat.com/2023/03/is-india-the-mother-of-democ...

[2]https://trueafrica.co/article/why-democracy-is-just-as-afric...

[3]https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2023/09/the-haudenosaunee-confeder...

[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_influences_on_the_Is...

[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_contributions_to_the_Isl...

> ... Ancient Roman law, and Christianity as a religion.

Were Mussolini alive today, he'd have another form of government to sell you!

Unfortunately, that's literally genocide.